May 1, 2021 at 7:30 p.m.

Virginia Tech music professors Yevgeny Dokshansky and Richard Masters present a recital of clarinet and piano music by the Swiss-born American Jewish composer Ernest Bloch (1880-1959). 

Ernest Bloch composed many works for string instruments, but did not compose any solo music for the clarinet. Prof. Dokshansky has thus transcribed a number of Bloch’s string pieces for the clarinet: Suite Hebraique (originally for viola); Meditation and Processional (originally for viola); From Jewish Life (originally for cello); and Suite (originally for viola). 

Bloch’s compositional style was heavily influenced by the type of music he heard as a child during religious services in the Beth Yaakov Synagogue in Geneva. These new transcriptions expand the clarinet and piano repertoire, and also give clarinetists access to the uniquely Jewish soundworld of Ernest Bloch.